You think they created the Banished just to drop them completely if there is no Halo Wars 3?In Halo Wars 2 ending a Guardian appears and stops the new Halo ring created by Anders from S.O.F.Presumably the ring from Halo 5 legendary ending.
So they already connected main Halo game with a spinoff.The art director from Halo Wars 2 is in Infinite,so all his creations for S.O.F. and Banished could be reused in a fps game.
Was the art director. Jeremy Cook left 343i earlier this year around March sadly! :P
His work is still present and felt of course, but don't expect it to be too similar to that design master-piece that is Halo Wars 2.
EDIT.:
I don't think the Banished in Hi are that unbelievable frankly. Nor do I think it would be forced. Quite the opposite! The community likes them a lot, plot points between H5 and HW2 have been treated already and they can be introduced quite easily as well because Chief himself never has seen them yet either. The main character is mirroring the new player-base or the fans that skipped HW2! Chief could just fight them and dropping some questions about their armor and modified tech after a first encounter. It's not that hard! Let's not forget that we didn't knew anything about the Covenant in HCE, but the story was still easily comprehensible by everyone thanks to an interesting opening and slowly opening the enemy gallery piece by piece and level by level. I don't see why 343i shouldn't be able to pull off the same trick!
We only need a way for them to get onto Zeta Halo in a logical manner, because their mother-ship won't leave the Ark any time soon!
The only good reason beside that why they still might go for the Covenant over the Banished is marketing honestly. The name is more recognizable. That's it! It's an important point of course, but apart of that? The Covenant was defeated multiple times by now, they got no real leadership among them (
alas, we got a new much more interesting character all together), their god like figure - aka
evil Cortana - is as interesting as a cardboard cutout and there is no real target for them either but for yet another blind religious fundamentalist plot tread. Now that M'dama is gone the only objective left for the Covenant is the wish-fulfillment of the least interesting antagonist we got so far in a main Halo title and therefore it wouldn't be easy at all story wise to make them fit into the new plot, at least not with an interesting purpose that I can't see without forcing myself back into the enhanced universe. And that is exactly what 343i is trying to avoid!
So yeah, the Covis got the branding recognition as a strong point, but that's about it. Having the Banished as the main alien army force fells a hell lot less forced to me!
Another huge advantage would be a more logical reason for having a three faction story way before the Flood get inevitably reintroduced down the line. With a more diversified army as well!
Cortana would have more specialized units:- Grunts and Elites with new weaponry on the front line
- backed up by Promethean soldiers, doggos and Enforcers
(
hopefully with better AI routines/pathing over TP, bullet-sponge mechanics or sheer number)
- Jackals as snipers and for mid range combat
- Some new support classes or heavily redesigned Watchers
- Knights as the heavy hitters
- for vehicles something fast on land like Ghosts and a good mix of heavy flying units
On the other side the Banished would be a more brute and direct force:- Brutes as the main soldier unit with Grunts as enforcement on the Front line
- Elite pairs with carbines for some good old mid range combat
- Spec OPS Elite/Grunts as a stronger and stealth based counterpart of the Covi front-line units
(
slick black Sangeli and maybe something steampunk inspired like Reach for the Grunts)
- Engineers as a main support role
- Hunters as their heavy hitters
- specialized in land vehicles with Banshees to cover the sky
By mixing Promethean units much more with Covis you also make them more interesting from the get-go as well imho. I also would love to see some lost fellas like Yanme'e and Skirmisher to make a small comeback if possible, but the armies seem a bit crowded already, even for an open-world/semi-open-world like I guess Hi is going to be.